maybe he never wanted to be the pianoman
by Firaga Productions
Summary: So sing us a song, you're the pianoman / What if Soul had never left the family, had instead stifled the weapon gene until it died?


04/2014  
Firaga Productions

**Pianoman**

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_So sing us a song, you're the pianoman._  
_Sing us a song tonight._  
_- Billy Joel_

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**1.**

He's 8 years old, and it's 11:30 at night, and he can't decide if this blade sticking out of his right arm is really freaking cool or absolutely terrifying, but he can't keep this to himself and his big brother Wes is the coolest person he knows, so he runs down the hall of his too-big house as quickly as he can, and opens the door quietly (because it's 11:30 and he's not supposed to be awake anyway) and runs to the open window. Wes is sitting on the window ledge as he always is this time of night, taking a long drag off his cigarette, and Soul pads over to his big brother and points to his arm.

"Wes," he whispers, and Wes blinks in shock before dropping his cigarette on his lap when he realizes that there's a blade sticking out of Soul's arm.

"For fuck's sake, Soul, don't scare me like that..."  
"Sorry, but I had to show you!"  
"Yeah, I see it, kiddo."

Wes picks up his cigarette, pulls a lighter from the pocket of his sweats, and relights. Soul never wanted to be more like his big brother than when he sees him on the window ledge, late at night, lit up only by the moon and his cigarette lighter. Wes takes another drag from his cigarette before speaking up again.

"Can I touch it?"

Soul nods eagerly, and Wes runs a hand over the black and red blade.

"Looks like someone's inherited great-grandpa's taboo weapon gene," the older Evans brother mutters before smiling at the younger, and he tilts his 8 year old head to the left, blinking dark eyes curiously. Wes blows more smoke out the window and tosses the butt into the small ashtray he only brings out at night.

"They say there's this school. For people like you. It's in Death City, Nevada, run by the Grim Reaper himself..."

Soul climbs onto the window ledge, leaning opposite of his brother, careful with the blade still poking out of his arm, and Wes tells him all about weapons and meisters and kishin, that people like him exist, that people like him have purpose, and for the first time in his 8 years of life he feels like he may actually belong somewhere.

"Can you retract it, Soul?"

The younger introvert, still processing this information, stares blankly at the blade, focusus on what Wes just asked him, puts all his concentration into the blade, willing it to disappear. It does, finally, and it occurs to him now why he always sets off the metal detectors at airports.

"Wes?"  
"Yeah, kiddo?"  
"Why did you call it 'great-grandpa's taboo weapon gene?'"

Wes pauses. Pulls a cigarette from the pack beside him. Lights it up.

"Because great-grandpa James, on mom's side, is a weapon."  
"Really? Cool!" He grins, showing all of his jagged teeth, then stops and frowns. "How come we never see him?"

Wes pauses for a lot longer this time around, and Soul begins to fidget and squirm, before the older finally speaks up.

"Have you ever thought that something may be wrong with this world we live in? Too much money, too much pride, like people aren't meant to live in cages?"

Soul doesn't understand exactly, but he does know that sometimes he wants a giant hammer so he can smash the piano to bits and knock over the expensive vases, rip the curtains off the wall, and show all of his jagged little teeth in the yearly family photos. He contemplates this with a small frown on his face.

"Wes?"  
"Yeah, kiddo?"  
"Am I gonna get kicked out of the family like great-grandpa James?"  
"I don't know, Soul. Do you want to?"

Soul thinks of the family photo last year, beaming grins on his family's faces, his own close-lipped smile hiding his molar deformities. He thinks of the piano in the music room, and how inadequate he feels playing along to Wes' superior violin. But he also thinks of when his mom insisted the maid make his favorite meal on his birthday (chicken fingers, macaroni and cheese, lots of ketchup) even when his grandmother lectured them at the table about how improper this meal was, or how his dad would smile at him when he successfully finished a particularly difficult piece of music, and clapped wildly as if he was truly proud of his son.

"No," Soul finally answers, and Wes shrugs, finishing his cigarette.  
"Then don't let anyone find out. Supress it. Hide it. Only bring it out in the dead of the night, and you'll be just fine."  
"Like you and the cigarettes?"

The 16 year old smiles, but Soul doesn't see the smile meet his eyes.

"Yeah," he finally replies hollowly, "like the cigarettes."

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**2.**

He was born William Soul Evans, and his father insisted they call him Will, a good strong name, but his mother, who caved when naming Wes, would sing lullabies to her youngest son, and would quiet his tears, and would whisper, "Sleep, Soul, it's okay baby, it's okay, Soul."

Sarah Evans had an art studio in the basement, and when she was 19 and finishing her music degree, she was sitting under a tree on campus, sketchbook in her hands, when her last name was still Parker, and a young man with bright blue eyes leaned over to see what she was sketching. Benjamin Evans was his name, but she called him Ben for the 1st time in his life, and he decided that her blue eyes were so much clearer than his own.

She was a pianist and a singer, contrasting his own love for stringed instruments. But she was also an artist, a painter more often than not, and he had never seen someone with such a steady hand and an eye for color. She was different from his own family. She thought in abstract, her music reflected it, but she _was_ a musician at least and they could over look the weird art and the paint in her hair, so long as she kept the canvases in the basement and scrubbed the paint off her hands before approaching Evans family events.

So when her youngest son was born, whose striking crimson eyes reminded her so much of her grandfather, she kept quiet when her in-laws commented on his strange appearance, combed his hair as well as she could, taught him to shut his mouth and hide his jagged teeth, but put her foot down when they tried to call him Will. He was Soul, he was her soul, and though her grandfather was kept quiet, her genetics never spoken of, her baby, her weapon, would at very least be called Soul.

Sarah wondered to herself if he would have had the potential to become a Death Scythe, one of Lord Death's very own.

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**3.**

It's September 23, and tomorrow's his 14th birthday, and he looks in the mirror of his own bathroom, at his reflection in the fluorescent lighting, and realizes not for the 1st time that something is different about him. He's wearing a towel around his waist, towel almost as white as his own hair, and he can see why the other students at his school are so damn afraid of him.

He insists to himself that he is cool and he does not give a shit, but his older brother turned 22 and moved out to the city to a loft apartment, attending some prestigious music school like their parents and grandparents always wanted for them, and since his brother left, his father became so much more strict and he didn't even have Wes to talk to anymore about any of this.

Wes inherited his father's blue eyes and mother's pale blonde hair, the strong jawline of his paternal grandfather and strong callouses from years of violin. He seemed to get the best of everything from everyone, but only Soul saw him chainsmoking in the dead of the night and the liquor bottles he stored in his fridge now, and how Wes had girlfriend after girlfriend yet still caught the eye of the Latino poolboy when Wes was 18 and Soul had just turned 10.

Yet Soul's imperfections are on display right on his face, dark red eyes that match the blades he keeps hidden, the pale hair that his family tries to pass off as blonde but is so unmistakably white, the haunting music he writes that shocks his grandmother and offends his father.

And he knows Wes isn't perfect, knows it better than anyone, but Wes was born with normal teeth and normal eyes and an amiable personality, but he can't seem to start a conversation for the life of him and it takes him longer to process information than most people and his music freaks everyone out and he's too shy to have friends over to stay the night so his family thinks he's weird, but they don't know that he scares the girls at school every day just by _existing_.

He thinks back to this school Wes mentioned all those years ago, and wonders if there are other white-haired freaks like him, but he knows that this is stupid and he knows what happens to the freaks in the Evans family; so he scowls at his reflection in the mirror, puts on his slacks and a nice shirt, walks downstairs to piano practice and wonders how pissed his family would be if he grew his hair out long and wore it in a ponytail. Or spiked it up and wore a headband.

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**4.**

Sarah wonders if they're starting the boys too early, if Wes would've chosen to play the violin on his own, but her husband insists that this is the way things are done in his family and that he turned out just fine, so she keeps her mouth shut and holds her squirming 2 year old as her older son awes the crowd with his first solo violin performance. She claps with the crowd, bringing Soul's hands together with her own, noting not for the first time how long and slim his baby fingers are, and wonders if he'd have chosen the piano on his own one day if she hadn't decided for him.

The 2 year old stops squirming in her arms, instead becoming fixated on the gray beehive of hair on the woman seated in front of them, and Sarah has to quickly snatch Soul's hands out of the air seconds before he would've taken a fistful of hair, and possibly yanked it right off of her head.

Her younger son's personality is already developing. He's restless and curious and quiet, hiding his face in her shoulder when stranger's attempt eye contact, calculating and analyzing his movements before taking off toward whatever catches his interest in that moment. He's not like Wes, who enjoyed attention and smiled brightly at the strangers at the store, who eagerly pleased his father and knew how to keep his hands to himself. And Sarah never expected the boys to be anything alike, though her husband would often comment on how much less agreeable Soul seemed in comparison. Sarah would smile fondly at Ben, warmly at her baby, and simply agree. "That he is, love."

"No, Soul," she snaps quickly, slapping the 2 year old's hand as he reaches again for the woman's hair. He blinks up at her, makes eye contact stubbornly (he's so much more stubborn than his older brother), and she holds the glare just as deeply until he erupts into giggles and she has to hold a hand over his mouth to appease the glares of the aristocrats around them, though she shares a secret smile of her own to the distaste of her husband.

"Keep him quiet, Sarah," he warns with a low voice. She's halfway tempted to tickle her little boy until he giggles and laughs much louder, but she loves her husband even with his upper class ways, and shifts the boy until he rests his head sleepily on her shoulder, one thumb in his mouth and the other dangling behind her back.

She beams proudly at her older son when the recital ends, using one arm to support her sleeping toddler and the other to pull Wes into a hug as she kneels to his level.

"I'm so proud of you," she whispers into his ear, and the 10 year old grins at the approval before turning to his father, who nods his approval as well.

"Thanks, Mama. Thanks, Father." Wes grins, and Sarah knows he'll go far in the music world, but she wonders if he loves it or if he just loves their approval, and she glances down at the toddler asleep on her shoulder, who has already shown very little concern for the approval of others, and wonders if keeping her genetic suspicions to herself is really the best thing for her baby weapon at all.

But her husband is ready for supper now, and the Evans family leaves the concert hall, and Soul shifts in Sarah's arms as they walk to the Cadillac, and her neat bun slowly falls into disarray at his movements. She reaches with one hand to tuck the fallen strands out of sight, but Ben takes her hand in his own as they progress through the lot.

"Leave it," he murmurs softly. "I like it this way."

She knows marrying into such wealth and finesse has taken a toll on her, but she smiles at her husband and her babies, because for all his pride and his single-minded ideas on how things should be, he still loves her imperfections and the strands of blonde hair falling around her face.

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**5.**

Her name's Vanessa, he thinks. Or maybe Victoria. Veronica? She's one of the Harris twins, that much is certain. The sluttier of the two, if he remembers correctly. He won't take off his sunglasses, but she's already taken his black beanie and slung it on her head, taken 2 drags off his cigarette, laughed hysterically at something one of the other people here said, wound her fingers tightly around his neck to lean up and whisper in his ear that there's an empty bed down the hall in her apartment at 13B, and next thing he knows he's pinned against the back of her door with a tongue jammed in his mouth.

He's not high enough for this, he thinks, as she's horny and messy and too erratic for his tastes. He likes his ladies cool and calm like the jazz between his ears, but he still grabs her ass because it's been a while anyway, and whichever twin this is seems pretty ready to go.

It's over too quickly, though, she's the selfish type and he didn't have to do too much work to get her off. She falls asleep pretty quickly, too, so he helps himself to her shower and washes the stench of bad sex off his body, pulls the beanie back over his head, lights a cigarette as he leaves the apartment complex.

He's 18 now, he knows he's probably wasting his talent as a musician, but he also knows he doesn't belong in that world anyway, so he finishes his cigarette and lights another on the walk back to his own apartment 5 blocks over. The party was a bust anyway, he thinks as he finally makes it home and unlocks the doow, and he wonders not for the first time what would've happened had he looked into this weapon thing at all. He glares with disdain at the piano in his living room. Sure, he's pretty fuckin' brilliant at the instrument, but brilliance never equated to happiness, and he shrugs off his leather jacket, leaves it on the couch, takes an aspirin, collapses in bed, sleeps off the hangover til he has to report to the Evans Estate for the monthly family dinner. He's not gonna be high enough for that shit, either.

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**6.**

She never once thought that marrying into the Evans family was a mistake. The Evans family is old money, musical genius, an aire of superiority, fake smiles and crystal champagne glasses, things she never grew up with and never thought she'd raise her own children around. The superiority complex gives her a headache, she doesn't know how to hold her nose in the air that long, but people do some crazy things for love, and Benjamin Evans is her soul mate and no amount of pretentiousness could take that away from her.

She wasn't poor, though by her new family's standards she may as well have grown up on the streets. Her grandfather, James Parker, bore his weapon status proudly, and taught her that it's not the shape or the form that matters - it's the soul. And it's the soul of Benjamin Evans that drew her to him in the first place. It's what she reminds herself when he reminds her too much of his parents, when he pushes his children past their breaking points, when he shakes his head in disappointment at _yet another_ party when a 3 year old Soul manages to break 2 of his mother's vases and somehow yank the toupee right off the mayor's gigantic, bald head within a 2 hour period. (She remembers these incidents clearly - it was a difficult feat to effectively punish the child while stifling giggles behind her hand.)

It's not easy in the least to conform to her new family's standards, she slips up in public often and easily, without a semblance of remorse, but she loves her husband and she tolerates her in-laws because it's not the shape or form that matters - it's the soul.

But when she sees her sons - Wes aged 14 and Soul aged 6 - together in the music room, Wes on his violin and Soul struggling to keep up, the tight-lipped smile of her mother-in-law, staring at Soul with something like disappointment, it's hard for her to keep her composure. They finish the piece, Wes smiles encouragingly at his little brother, and her mother's heart breaks when she hears the family matriarch's form of critique.

He's not Wes. She knows he's not Wes. And Sarah doesn't know how many more times she can watch her baby tighten his resolve and pretend not to be hurt when he's asked for the thousandth time to play his instrument more like Wes _even though the piano and the violin are two different types of instruments _and she wants nothing more than to scoop the child into her arms, to soothe him and to comfort him and to let him know that she doesn't want him to be more like Wes, she likes him just as well when he's Soul.

But she can't do that.  
She trained for months to be a suitable member of society.  
Backtalking the matriarch is a mistake she knows not to make ever again.

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**7.**

It's the end of their first recital together as brothers.

Soul is 7.

Wes is 15.

Soul wanted to play the music he hears in his head.

But it wasn't proper, they said.

It wasn't normal, they said.

It wasn't something Wes would play, they said.

"But, I'm not Wes," he says.

His whisper is not heard by anyone.

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_"Maybe I never wanted to be the pianoman."_  
_- Soul Evans, aged 19_

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an: If Soul had never left the family, if he'd stifiled the weapon gene until it died..

Yeah, I'm missing out several things. Like, all the destruction the child probably caused for all those years he tried to control the weapon gene by himself. But I'm terribly fascinated by Sarah Evans now, and I want to write all sorts of stories about Sarah, and how her silence and fear affected her children.

I know everyone and their grandmother thinks Pianoman is Soul's song. That's because it _is._ :D


End file.
